


John: Have an Existential Crisis

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: College AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-05
Updated: 2011-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nic Cage is arrested on assault charges. John reacts predictably.</p><p>Fortunately Dave is there, with movies.</p><p>From Captchalogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John: Have an Existential Crisis

It's raining, which is to say it's a perfectly normal Washington night. Your roommate is out partying, and normally you'd be all over that shit but you have a term paper due tomorrow. So of course you're blowing it all off and mixing up some fresh beats, because nobody tells Dave Strider how to use his time.

Through your noise-cancelling headphones you hear a loud pounding at the door, and realize that whoever is there has probably been knocking for a while, unheard. You glance at the rain streaking down the windows and think, oh shit. You open the door.

A sopping wet Egbert stumbles, practically falls into your room. His hair is plastered to his head, his shirt is dripping, and his eyeglasses are seriously fogged up. He takes them off to fruitlessly dry them on his sleeve and looks up at you.

You notice how pink and bloodshot his eyes are, like he's been crying.

"What the hell, Dave? I was knocking for like five minutes." He's trying to be playful and gently chastising but his voice cracks. Something's eating this kid. You've probably never seen him this upset before; you do a quick memory scan and come up blank. Nope. This is new.

You skip the excuses and cut straight to the point. "What's up, Egbert? You look like the kid from Old Yeller after being told he's gotta shoot his own dog. Spill it."

He opens his mouth, tries to say something, then closes it. Finally, he says, "I'm taking your clothes. These are too wet."

"Yeah, sure. Least I can do to make up for totally leaving you high and dry, metaphorically speaking, in the rain." He crosses your floor, grabs a shirt, sniffs it, flings it disgustedly in your direction, then opens the closet and pulls down something much less offensive. He doesn't even care that he changes in front of you. Shirt now dry, he collapses onto a beanbag.

"All right, Egbert." Bros or not, there are such things as patience and tact and neither are qualities that Dave Strider possesses. "You can't come in here sobbing like a teenage girl after a breakup and put on my clothes and then just not say anything."

John sinks into your beanbag, not really listening to you. Tears or raindrops glitter around his mostly-closed eyes like a motherfucking mahou shoujo fairy princess or some shit like that.

He looks up at you and says with a croak, "Nic Cage."

Oh jegus fucking christ is this kid serious. "What, your mancrush? Did he die in a freak accident involving, um, involving," and you don't have it in you to complete the metaphor, John just looks so fucking pathetic down there. He shakes his head hurriedly and turns over, unwilling to talk.

You guess that's all you're going to get from him. Pulling out your iPhone, you google "Nicholas Cage."

Google search replies back, _Did you mean: **Nicolas Cage**_.

Whatever.

"Nic Cage, born Nicolas Kim Coppola, American actor, producer and director in movies such as Leaving Las Vegas and National Treasure, arrested in New Orleans for _oh._ " Your thumb flicks through the news article. John curls himself up into as tight of a ball as possible.

You click the phone off. For about a minute, neither of you speaks.

"Shit sucks," you finally say, just as John says, "It's not fair." You then do the awkward thing where you both apologize for interrupting the other.

John finally takes the initiative. "S'not fair. He sh-should've been for puh-" He sniffles and wipes his arm across his face. "For protecting his wife f-from bar th-thugs. His p-pregnant wife."

"Yeah, this is pretty much the opposite of that." John nods gloomily. He's gathered himself up into a sitting position now and is hugging his knees and rocking gently back and forth. Wow, people actually do that. You figure you should say something reassuring right about now.

"Well, on the bright side, he's not gonna actually be _in_ jail. I mean, he'll get bailed out and maybe fined or something." John mutters something about chipping in to help pay it and you ignore the shit out of that suggestion, as ironic as the idea might seem.

"S'just... he's just so, so cool, an' I just, Nic Cage wouldn't _do_ something like this. He just wouldn't."

"Yeah, well." You pinch the bridge of your nose and sigh. "I guess heroes can't be heroes 24/7, right? Must get tired of inspiring so many little children and college students to grow up and become shitty actors. I mean, sort of okay actors. He was good enough in _Wicker Man_. Y'know, with the bees."

John giggles in between his tears, and it's weird as fuck. "Noooo, not the bees."

"The bees, my god," you say with an uncharacteristic chuckle, and suddenly you're both laughing your heads off. Somehow. It's barely even funny, but your brain is saying _go, go, go, anything to make him stop crying, anything_.

"Hey, hey Egbert," you gasp after the third wave of laughter dies down, "Remember when I gave you a force-Dave-Strider-to-watch-whatever-shitty-movie-you-want pass for your birthday a couple of years back? Consider that pass to be temporarily in effect, starting now. Let's get our movie on. I've got torrents of every single movie you could ever watch and shit that's too bad even for your tastes. Take your pick. See, here's Con Air. You can even sing along to _How Do I Live_ if you want, as loud as you like, as long as you don't piss off the guys next door although honestly they're probably too stoned to care." But when you see tears well back up in John's eyes at the mention of Con Air you realize it was probably a mistake to bring it up.

"Okay, never mind, never mind then." You execute a delirious biznasty BACKPEDALTECH LV.5: ADVANCED RETREAT and deftly maneuver out of the situation. "Got plenty others to choose from. Fuckin' Kimba the White lion, we've got Bruce Almighty, shit dude Morgan Freeman is literally _God_ , we've got Click, although honestly knowing you you'd probably cry at it, we've got everything." You really do have everything, and now you're scrolling past what is basically the entire discography of Nicolas Cage that you definitely _didn't_ download just because you thought it would be the kind of thing he would like, no siree.

John grins, bearing brace-locked buckteeth. "Yuh-- you know what movie I've never seen, Dave?"

"Enlighten me."

"Harry Potter. Never saw it in theaters, didn' really have anyone to go with."

"Holy shit, dude, Rose is gonna kill you if she finds out."

"I always wanted to watch it with her," he says, kind of dreamily. You recall that he went through a phase in high school where he had a crush on her until she politely but definitively rejected him, and everyone learned the true meaning of lesbians that day. You guess he's not _quite_ over that yet, which is typical Egbert.

"Yeah, well, she's at a pretentious school in New England somewhere so the chances of that happening are slim to nil. Now's your chance to make up for lost time."

He considers this, then asks, "Well, what else have you got?"

"Fucking everything, Egbert, weren't you listening?" He's on his feet now and is looking over your shoulder.

"Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?!"

"Irony," you tell him dismissively, and keep scrolling.

"Ooh, ooh, wait, stop, scroll back up, I think I see something," he says, leaning in intently to get a closer look. "Yes! Right there. That one."

Your mouse hovers over the little roadcone. "The Neverending Story?"

"What? It's a good movie."

You pause, then shrug _to hell with it_ and fire it up.

It is amazing. You've never actually seen this one before, but you know most of the plot and the characters via popcultural osmosis as well as a cursory glance at the Wikipedia article. Halfway through though and you're not even paying attention to what's happening onscreen, because it's much more interesting to watch John's reactions throughout the whole thing. He's transfixed, wide-eyed, grinning like an idiot, and you'd never think he'd been through an existential crisis but for the tear streaks on his face.

"Did you see that, Dave?" he asks excitedly as Atreyu receives the Auryn and embarks on his mystical quest to save Fantasia.

"Yes, Egbert, of course I fucking saw it, I'm watching the movie with you." He's so excited, even though you're positive he's seen this movie before, and you briefly wish you had his ability to enjoy the same things again and again.

Then Atreyu's horse is dying in the swamp and John's crying again, not sobbing like he was before but just sort of weeping silently, and whoops oh well the intention was to cheer him up. You figure movie tears are better than actual tears, though. Hesitantly, you bring your arm to rest on his shoulders. He leans into you and sort of stops crying and the scene moves on and _well_. Okay.

The movie ends beautifully and whimsically and optimistically and John still has tears in his eyes but they're happy tears, as far as you can tell. Your arm is going numb so you lift it off his shoulders (it's not awkward if neither of you says anything). He mutters something about friendship and stares intently at the list of movies that's popped up again.

"What now?"

"I think," you say, and you look sidelong at the kid's grinning face, "I think your ticket is still valid. It's twelve AM, the night is young."

John looks at you like he's a little kid on Christmas and you're _actually Santa_. You click at semi-random.

It's _Pokemon: The First Movie_. At this point, though it could have been _Troll 2_ and you'd have been okay with that. Actually, that would be hilarious, and you make a mental note to watch it with him sometime.

Maybe when this one is over.

*****

Your roommate comes back at around 6 am and is too hung over to care about the other guy passed out in his bed or about your laptop that's still playing _Star Wars Episode 3_ , although he mutes the sound. You wake up at the vibrations of his footsteps and blearily unstick your face from your keyboard. You realize you've probably had cooler moments than this.

You remember that John has classes in the morning, little overachiever that he is. You belatedly remember that you had an essay due today, but to hell with it. Using your Strider resolve to operate on little to no sleep, you push yourself to your feet, lurch out the door, and make it to the campus Starbucks to purchase two venti coffees.

Both with whipped cream.

Because that's what bros are for.


End file.
